The tiger took two more breaths and closed its mouth. It turned from me and looked downstream. It flicked its tail and turned back to the crane. It took the dead bird in its mouth, slowly climbed up the bank, and disappeared in the tall grass.
I quickly walked back up the stream and to the path leading to the village. I reached a rise in the hill, and when I saw the village, I stopped. There, in front of Suk-won’s house, were ten palace soldiers on horseback. I looked behind me. The tiger had not followed me. The white-cheeked starlings were gone, too. I looked back at the village. The soldiers had spotted me and were driving their horses toward me.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The soldiers were on me before I could run. Their horses snorted and stomped as they pulled up in front of me. One soldier dismounted. On the chest of his black tunic was the flying five-toed dragon, the emblem of King Gojong.
He approached and bowed. “Begging your pardon, Majesty,” he said, “you must come with us.”
“What do you want with me?” I demanded. Though I tried to sound like the queen, my heart pounded in my chest.
“The king wishes to see you.”
“I will not go back to the palace as a common prisoner,” I said. “If the palace wants to kill me, you will have to do it here.”
“Majesty,” the guard said. “The king is waiting for you at the potter’s house.”
“The king is here?”
The guard offered the reins to me. “If you please, Majesty, take my horse.”
“No,” I said, “I will walk.”
I walked up the path toward the house while the guards followed behind. As I neared, the soldiers there bowed as they did when I was at the palace. Off to the side, they had bound Kyung-jik at the hands and two guards, both with blood on their faces, held him firm. My guard looked at me, worried. At the big building’s far end, black smoke poured out of the kiln chimney high into the air. Suk-won stood at the door watching me.
“The king is inside, Majesty,” the guard on foot said.
I strode past the bowing guards to the door of the house. I pushed it open. Ki-soo was inside looking terrified. When she saw me, she pointed to the lattice door leading to the courtyard. “The king is out there,” she said.
I went through the house and stood in the doorway to the courtyard. There, alone, was King Gojong, sitting on the bench sipping tea. He wore a black cap and a gray riding robe closed with the king’s medallion.
When he saw me, he set his tea down, took off his cap, and stood. This took me by surprise. The king never stood for anyone, not even me. “Come, my wife,” he said, “have tea with me.”
“Have you come to take me back to the palace so your father can kill me?” I asked without leaving the door.
He looked hurt at my question and shook his head. “My father does not know I am here. I left the palace in secret well before the sun rose. I rode on horseback all morning to see you. As you know, I do not like riding horseback. It hurts my legs. I much prefer my palanquin. But I want to talk to you.”
“If the Taewŏn-gun knows where I am, he will send his assassins to kill me.”
“He doesn’t know. I found you through Lady Min. It seems my mother favors you. Or perhaps she favors the Mins over the House of Yi.” He waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. It is all so foolish. Anyway, in secret, I asked her to find you. I thought because she is a Min, she would know where you were. And she did.”
“Lady Min . . . ?” I said.
“Yes.” He pointed at the bench. “Come. Sit. I want to talk to you.” I went to him and we sat together.
“Will you have some tea?” he asked. “I will pour it for you.”
“You, the king, will pour my tea?”
He answered by taking the pot and filling my cup. I noticed lines on his face that I hadn’t seen before. He looked older, more mature. He looked tired, too.
I took a sip of tea. “How is our son?” I asked. “Is the prince safe?”
“Yes,” the king replied. “I had him brought to the palace. My father wishes him no harm.”
“I’m thankful for that,” I said. “I have worried about him.” I let relief at the news of my son sink in for a few seconds. Then I said, “So, my husband, you say you want to talk to me. What about?”
Gojong leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the courtyard stones. “The Chinese army is at the Yalu River,” he said. “They are coming to drive the Japanese out.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “Empress Cixi promised me she would protect us from Japan.”
Gojong said, “My father plays a risky game. He used the dwarf Japanese to take power, and now he wants them to leave. But he is afraid of the Chinese. He thinks they will have his head.”
“His head might be the price he pays for collaborating with the Japanese,” I said.
Still leaning forward, the king shook his head. “I don’t know what to do. You have always been better at things like this. That is why I came here . . . to ask what we should do.”
“You want my advice?” I took another sip of tea and held the cup in my hand. “You ran to your father when I defied the Japanese. You did not come to my rescue when he turned the people against me. They wanted to kill me, and you did nothing.”
He looked at me with sad eyes. “I’m sorry I left you,” he said. “I was afraid. But if you come back, I will never leave you again, even if they try to kill us. Please, my wife, believe me.”
I glared at my husband. But in his face, I saw how desperate he was, how much he needed me. In my mind, he was still the spoiled boy king who depended on his father. Yet he had risked his life and defied his father by coming here to talk to me. He wanted to stand up to his father once and for all, and he was asking me to help him.
My heart went soft. At that moment, I believed that someday I could love him. He wasn’t tall, handsome, and brave like Kyung-jik, but he was my husband. We had made a prince together. For a while, we’d been able to work together. Perhaps we could work together again.
I slipped my hand into his and he squeezed it. It was the first time we’d ever touched like that. There was love in it. He pulled me to him in an embrace, and our hearts beat together. For the first time since that fateful day when they married us, King Gojong was my true husband.
After a few moments, he pulled away. “When the Chinese come, return to the palace and we will rule our country together. But I must ask for this. Please, do not have my father killed. Send him to China where he will not drive us apart. Lady Min begs for his life, too.”
I sat up straight. “Your father will always want to run the country. He will plot with the Japanese, even from China. Mark my word, if we let him go, he will return someday.”
The king tried to look brave. “If he tries to return, I will fight him alongside you.”
I relaxed a little. I said, “I promise that if the Taewŏn-gun is killed, it will not be on my order. I cannot say what the Chinese will do, although I will get word to Empress Cixi that it is my wish to let him live. As for what to do regarding the current situation, do this. Give the Japanese what they want to make them leave. Give them an apology for the soldiers killed. Offer reparations if that’s what they want. Anything, as long as their troops leave without a war. When they are gone, you and I will take back the palace. Then we will set our country in the right direction again.”
King Gojong nodded. We sat for a few minutes more, and then he pointed to the house. “I must go. I am going on to Pusan,” he said. “If I go there, I will lead our enemies far away from you. When they catch up to me, I will tell them I was afraid of the Chinese and wanted to get as far away from the north as possible. People in this house should say that my stop here was to rest and water the horses.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That is clever. Is it your idea?”
Gojong grinned. “It is.”
“Well,” I said, “it seems you have good instincts for politics after all.”
We rose from the bench and
the king faced me. “I am glad I came here,” he said. “I am eager to see you again at the palace when the time comes.”
We embraced again. Then together we went through the house and out the front door. He mounted his horse, and, though he rode it awkwardly, I was filled with pride for my husband as he and his guards rode down the road, on to Pusan.
The Chinese army crossed the Yalu River that day and occupied Seoul in less than three days. The Japanese, outnumbered and not willing to go to war with a much larger country, offered no resistance and pulled back to the south. As I had predicted, the Japanese agreed to a complete withdrawal only if they received a formal apology and financial reparations for the soldiers the mobs had killed. King Gojong agreed to their demands as I had told him to, and Japan and China signed a treaty. The treaty stipulated that both countries would remove their armies from the peninsula and notify each other before intervening in Korea again. As I had requested, the Chinese did not kill the Taewŏn-gun. Instead, they took him to Peking where he would stay under house arrest. Finally there was peace in my country, and I could go back to Gyeongbok Palace and take my seat on the throne.
But first we had to take the pots out of the kiln. As Suk-won had said, it took three days for the pots to cool after their day in the fire. Even then, when Suk-won unsealed the opening, it was warm inside. When Ki-soo climbed in to retrieve the first pots, she had to use lambskin gloves to handle them. I offered to help. “Thank you, Majesty,” Suk-won said, addressing me as queen now that there was no need to hide my identity. “That is not work for a queen.” Of course, I could have insisted and they would have had to let me do it. But I knew it would have embarrassed them to have their queen inside the hot, ashy kiln so I didn’t press it.
Kyung-jik and I stood by as each pot came out. Woo-jin sat on the floor with his face turned to the roof and an ear toward the kiln as if he could hear how the pots turned out. When Ki-soo handed a pot to him, Suk-won did a quick check of it. Then he set it on the ground alongside the kiln. When they had all the pots out and Ki-soo, sweaty and covered with ash, climbed out from the kiln, Suk-won said, “We will have to do a more thorough examination, but at first check, I would say it was an excellent firing. One in three looks to be acceptable.”
Woo-jin clapped his hands. “How did the one turn out?” he asked.
Suk-won picked up a pot. It was the tall one with the narrow neck that Woo-jin had me feel when I said I wanted to know the pots’ spirits. Suk-won turned it over and around and I saw that they had carved a design into it. “It looks perfect, Uncle,” Suk-won said.
“Let me have it,” Woo-jin said with his hands out.
Suk-won gave his uncle the pot and the blind man ran his hands over it as if it was a most precious thing. Then he cradled it like a baby. He threw his head back and smiled broadly. “Yes,” he said. “As I had hoped, it is worthy of a queen.”
He reached out a hand, and Suk-won helped him stand. Woo-jin held the pot out to me and bowed. “Majesty,” he said, “we made this one for you. Please accept it as our gift.”
I took the pot from the old man. In my hands, it was light and warm like a newborn baby. And it was exquisite. The celadon glaze had the radiance of jade and the clarity of spring water. I studied the carving. There, in hundreds of tiny strokes, they had carved a two-headed dragon with five toes. It was the same dragon as was on my tapestry. I ran my hands over the pot and in the center of it. I felt its spirit. It was the spirit of One Korea.
Suk-won said, “Woo-jin suggested the figure of the two-headed dragon. I thought it should be a crane for longevity or the queen’s medallion. But my uncle was quite adamant that it be this design. I hope you like it, Majesty.”
With the pot in my hands, I looked at Woo-jin. “Samchonim, you had your nephew carve this design before the king came. A dragon with five toes? You knew who I was all along, but you never indicated that you did.”
Woo-jin grinned as a blind man does. “Your position never came up when we talked,” he said simply.
Kyung-jik said, “Majesty, Woo-jin is the one who conveyed messages for you. He has many connections.”
I looked at Ki-soo, who had tried to wipe the sweat and ash from her face but only left it a smear. “You told me Woo-jin didn’t know who I was,” I said.
Ki-soo nodded. “I apologize, Majesty. I see now that it is I who did not know about him.”
I faced Woo-jin. “A two-headed dragon, samchonim?” I asked.
“I thought it would be a design to remind you of our talks,” he replied. I wanted to ask him more about what he knew of the two-headed dragon, but I decided this wasn’t the time or place.
“Suk-won,” I said, “you and your uncle are fine potters indeed. Good people like you make me proud of our country. Thank you for this gift. I will take it to the palace and put it where I will see it every day to remind me of your kindness.”
He bowed to me. “We are honored, Majesty.”
Two days later, Kyung-jik informed me that it was safe to go back to the palace and that my entourage was on its way to take me there the next day.
“Shall I have them bring your palanquin, Majesty?” my guard asked.
“No,” I replied. “I will ride on horseback where I can see my people.”
“As you wish, Majesty,” Kyung-jik said.
“Tell me,” I said, “how did you know Woo-jin? How did you know that you could trust him with our messages and that he would have a way to deliver them?”
“It was my uncle, Minister Kim,” Kyung-jik answered. “Years ago, he told me about the blind potter in this village and said that if you ever needed help, I should go to him. When the riots started, I contacted him and he said I should bring you here.”
“It makes me sad that Minister Kim is dead,” I said. “You and he saved my life. When I return to the throne, I will make you a general.”
“Thank you, Majesty. It is my honor to serve you, no matter what my title is.” He bowed low.
“I want to go early tomorrow,” I said. “I want to see my son and I have much to do.”
“Yes, Majesty. I will make the arrangements.”
Kyung-jik bowed again and went off to carry out my orders. As he walked away, I thought of what could have been if they hadn’t chosen me to be queen, if somehow Kyung-jik and I could have met—me an orphan girl, he a young palace guard. We could have had a good life—him practicing his swordsmanship and me soothing his sore muscles at night. It certainly would have been simpler than being queen. But that wasn’t what had been chosen for me. I had to be the queen, and he had to be a general in my army.
I went to the big building to find Woo-jin. I wanted to ask him what he knew about the two-headed dragon. I wanted to know if he knew anything about my tapestry and the words, “One Korea.” And I wanted to thank him for teaching me about spirits.
I pushed open the door, but he was not at the wheel. I went back outside and found Suk-won packing the fired pots in straw for storage until spring. There was a pile of broken pots next to him. He picked up a pot and examined it carefully. He brought it close to his face and ran a finger over it. Then he threw the pot on the pile of broken pots where it shattered into pieces.
“What was wrong with it?” I asked.
“Majesty,” he said with a nod. “I did not see you.”
“Why did you destroy that pot?”
“It was flawed,” he said. “There was a small impurity in the glazing. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but I could not let it go in good conscience.”
“Of course,” I said with a smile. “I am looking for your uncle. He’s not at the potter’s wheel. Do you know where he is?”
“I don’t know, Majesty. We won’t be making pots until I prepare the new clay, so he might be in the village. He has friends there.”
“Well, I should not go there to find him. My appearance would cause a stir now that everyone knows who I am. I will go for a walk instead.”
Suk-won looked at the sky. “
It is a good day for it,” he said and returned to his pots.
I hadn’t told anyone about the tiger I had seen at the stream days earlier. With Gojong coming from the palace, it had left my mind. Now, I thought it best to keep my encounter with the tiger to myself. And it seemed like it had been a dream, although I knew it wasn’t. I didn’t want to press my luck with the big cat, so I went into the woods instead of down to the stream.
Suk-won was right; it was a good day for a stroll. It was more like summer than fall, warm and still. The sun was high, and only a few clouds moved slowly across the sky. I followed a path into the woods. The leaves still clinging to the aspen trees fluttered softly. A woodpecker flitted from tree to tree. It was cool and pleasant, and soon, I was far into the woods. I remembered the tiger and thought I might be too far from the house. But before I turned to go back, I saw a thin line of smoke rising just off the path ahead of me. I took a few steps more and looked closely. There was Woo-jin, sitting in a clearing alone, smoking a bamboo pipe. Sunlight shined on the blind man as if Cheonjiwang, creator of heaven and earth, put the sun in the sky to cast its light on just him. Woo-jin sat on the ground with his legs crossed underneath him. He wore a white robe and a small black cap on his half-bald head. He rolled his head back and forth as if he was in a trance.
I thought I should let him be, but before I could leave, Woo-jin called out, “Come, Majesty. Sit with me so we can talk once more before you leave.”
I went to him. “How did you know someone was there, samchonim?” I asked. “And how did you know it was me?”
“I felt your spirit, of course,” he replied. “Anyway, I knew you would come. I called you.”
I sat on the ground in front of him. He took a puff on his pipe and blew a curl of white smoke into the sunlight. The smell of tobacco hung in the air. “The older I get, the more I like my tobacco,” he said. “I like my soju, too.” He grinned.
The Dragon Queen Page 26